Iran: Imperialism’s latest adventure

The term “Orwellian” has almost become overused in recent times when describing the words and deeds of the West’s leaders. Almost.

At the time of writing, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is in the process of gearing up for a war with Iran. So too is Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair. In September, during the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, he called for “regime change in Tehran”. “If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons capability it would destabilise the region very, very badly,” he said. “They continue to support groups that are engaged with terrorism and the forces of reaction.” Sound familiar? With his criminal lies so thoroughly debunked over the illegal invasion of Iraq, it’s increasingly hard to understand why anyone takes what the warmonger Blair says seriously.

Despite promising “hope” and “change” upon his election as US president in 2008, Barack Obama has continued the old imperialist tradition long promoted by the American establishment. Since 1945, more than 50 governments, many of them democratic, have been overthrown by the United States. In Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, this custom shows no signs of relenting. Indeed, neither does the hypocrisy. In October, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned Iran, with a straight face, that they should not “meddle in the affairs of Iraq”.

Legendary journalist John Pilger recently described Obama as the president of “permanent war”. Obama’s record confirms this assertion. This year, Obama approved an enormous military spending budget of $708 billion. Despite his pre-election promises, the inhumane Guantanamo Bay remains open, with more than 150 people still incarcerated there. US-led wars continue to rage in the Middle East, while the rights of working class Americans are increasingly restricted. Nowhere else can this be seen so clearly than in the brutal crackdowns against the peaceful Occupy movement.

Foreign policy, carrying on from the Bush era, remains unchanged. In May 2009, just five months before Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize, American B-52 bombers flattened the village of Granai, in the Farah Province of Afghanistan, killing 140 civilians. 93 of the murder victims were children. In June this year, a NATO air strike in the Helmand Province resulted in the deaths of 14 civilians, 12 of them children. More than 2,000 civilians have been murdered by unmanned US drones since 2004, most of them under Obama’s watch. This is his contribution to “peace”. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” said George Orwell. His words ring true today.

Just like in the lead up to the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003, a wave of half-truths and outright lies has flooded the media’s reporting of Iran. Of course, there have been honourable exceptions, including the New Statesman’s Medhi Hassan and the Guardian’s Seumas Milne. As in 2002 and 2003, the majority of the media are content to parrot the falsifications of the ruling class.

The big issue for the Western bourgeoise is Tehran’s “nuclear ability”. The fact that NATO and its allies hold a virtual monopoly over the world’s nuclear weapons apparently does not matter. That the US and Israel are the only states to have invaded countries in the Middle East in the past decade is also a non-issue. Iran has not invaded any other nation in living memory. Indeed, it has itself been the victim of foreign interference in the past.

In 1953, the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was over thrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and MI5. His crime? He had the temerity to place Iran’s oil under the ownership of the Iranian people. Since 1913, the country’s oil had been owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as BP. Mossaddegh changed this. For his trouble, he was replaced by the Shah, an absolute monarch with no regard for human rights. The US-backed Shah was eventually overthrown during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, an act of independence that has never been forgiven by the West.

The threat of war in Iran is a very real one. Indeed, as Seumas Milne reported in this Wednesday’s Guardian, it has already begun. A covert terrorist campaign carried out by the US and Israel is under way. The danger of this escalating and creating another bloodbath in the Middle East is merely an afterthought for Obama and his ilk. The people of Iran are expendable. Oil is all that matters.